The market of art dealers and galleries - Italy

1.1 Definition and presentation

The art market refers to the production and trade of works of art and antiquities.The art dealer and gallery market focuses on art dealers, who account for 58% of global art sales in 2019, and auctions (42% of global sales).

According to Wondeur AI's classification, art production is divided between star artists (1% of the world's artists), renowned artists (1%), established artists (14%), and emerging and underrepresented artists (84%).

The art market can also be segmented by category of work (sculpture, painting, etc.), by period (contemporary, modern, etc.), and by price range.

Globally, the value of the art market came to a halt in growth in 2020, its value dropped from $64 billion in 2019 to $50 billion in 2020, this is mainly due to the impact of the pandemic. The change in value was due to the decrease in sales volumes, which reached 31 million transactions in 2020 compared to 40 million in 2019.

However, thanks to new technologies being developed, a general recovery of the market can be expected.

In Italy, the art market has always been a strong point in the economy. Here, too, however, the market has been challenged by the recent pandemic. The Italian response has been to invest in digital solutions that would maintain stable growth even during such an uncertain period.

Art galleries are also reviewing their strategies and focusing on a more digital approach. An example of a digital strategy is the collaboration between several galleries (including some of the most influential ones in Milan) with the online platform Artsy in order to create communities and promote some emerging artists to them. The project was called Milan Gallery Community and was quite successful.

Another strategy used is the active use of social media to promote both artworks and exhibitions.

The latest recent trend is NTFs (non-fungible tokens), which are files associated with proof of ownership and authenticity that exist on the blockchain in order to encode the provenance, transfer conditions, and uniqueness of certain artworks.